


Creating a Need and Filling It

by minkhollow



Category: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-21
Updated: 2009-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:44:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkhollow/pseuds/minkhollow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy gets an idea from the radio, and makes a small but crucial blunder on his first League application.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creating a Need and Filling It

**Author's Note:**

> Partly inspired by a question from Cash Cab, and partly inspired by some real fake radio commercials that are close to my heart.  
> I am not Joss Whedon. I am also not WEBN, or connected to either of the companies *calling* themselves Brute Force Cybernetics, according to Google. I borrow out of love.

Billy's on vacation when he first catches the mad science bug.

His dad's got a little business in Cincinnati, the week before school starts, and takes Billy along as an early part of his sixteenth birthday present; they have to travel on Labor Day to make it back before he starts school, but that's all right. He thinks the natural history museum is pretty cool, but he spends most of his time looking forward to the big fireworks show the day before they leave and boggling at how much hotter it feels than at home - even though the weather channel says the base temperature is _higher_, at home.

Oh, and he's following up on something he heard on the radio the first full day they were there.

He just stared at the radio when the commercial started playing. A portable hole? It _had_ to be too good to be true - and Google backed that up, the only actual companies calling themselves Brute Force Cybernetics have nothing to do with that kind of product - but there would definitely be a market for the thing, if someone made it. For one thing, it would save him numerous trips to his locker.

The physics are actually really interesting to try to work through, 'try' being the operative word; he thinks he's got something he can work with by the time the sun sets on the day of the fireworks. Of course, he can't be sure until he gets home and has a chance to try it, so he keeps brainstorming on the plane home and comes up with another possibility.

Both of them backfire spectacularly, when he tries them, but Billy's never been easily discouraged by failure. More often than not, and especially when it comes to his experiments, failure just encourages him to keep trying until he gets it right.

***

He knows before the end of his first year of college that he wants to change the world.

It needs changing, frankly. The system doesn't help anyone who actually needs it, and the people who say they're helping others only seem to be helping themselves, more often than not. Someone's got to step up and do something about that, and it looks like he can't wait for anyone else to do it.

Halfway through his sophomore year, Billy finds his portable hole notes - both for his original attempts, and the next five variations before midterm report cards reminded him he also had to pass chemistry and history if he didn't want his parents to lock up the basement the next quarter. He decides, after rereading the notes, that it's a project worth reviving; after all, he's got a lot more to draw from than he did four years ago.

He does get it to work... sort of. After he takes the hole off the wall, he can't get to the stuff he put in it if he puts the hole up somewhere else, and an experiment with a penny proves that setting up the hole on the floor is every bit as dangerous as that old fake commercial warned. That and he needs to come up with some kind of way to put the backing back on it, so he can actually carry it around.

But it works, and that gives him some hope for his other ideas. Unfortunately, he can't major in mad science, and his projects get him more weird looks than anything else, but he wasn't really planning to rely on anyone else anyway.

From here, he can totally carry on by himself.

***

Dr. Horrible is sort of a hybrid of Billy's mad science projects and needing an outlet for the eternal frustration that is working tech support, at first. But then Captain Hammer beats him to a pulp for... he's not exactly sure what, but he thinks it's just for standing around with the lab coat on.

After that, there's no reason not to go semi-public, as he sees it. No one else is going to defend him, after all.

Even if Captain Hammer would let him get by with being one of the good guys, Billy's not so sure he'd want to be associated with them anyway. They're incredibly disorganised, and doing a lot more to preserve the status quo than they are to actually help people. There's a serious problem there, as he sees it; the status is... well, decidedly _not_ quo.

He's not sure about the Evil League of Evil, at first, but he's heard some pretty awesome things about their labs, and their overall approach sounds a little closer to giving the world the fresh start Billy really thinks it needs. As soon as he thinks he's got enough credibility to be considered, he sends in an application.

It's rejected.

He can't figure out why, at first, but then he has a closer look at the bylaws; the problem appears to be the email address he used. He'd forgotten all about Google's 'don't be evil' thing, but apparently, it worked against him regardless. According to the bylaws, the League only takes email applications through Hotmail.

He'd always known Microsoft was at least a little evil.

He really doesn't like the idea of using Hotmail at all, but if it'll help his application along, so be it. He can't re-apply for another year, though, so he puts a note on the top of his application to set up a League business account before he tries to send it off again.

He'll make some headway yet.


End file.
